All Monsters Must Die

by Magnus Bärtås

  Madame Choi was unaware that her ex-husband Shin Sang-ok was in the country at this time. The director was also quartered in a villa, but after five months he tried to escape. He stole a car and drove until the gas ran out, reached a train station by foot, and there he hid in a storeroom filled with explosives. He snuck onto a freight train but was discovered the next morning. After being arrested, he endured a lengthy interrogation in which the guards asked him a question and then left the room when he answered, only to return after they’d consulted with Kim Jong-il on the phone.

  Shin was locked in an isolation cell for three months. He tried to escape again, but was caught. This time he was formally tried and charged. He was sent to a prison, where he was put through a rigorous re-education program and made to do intense physical exercises. The guards also told him that Madame Choi had died in North Korea, and he mourned her. He tried to go on a hunger strike but violence was used to force him to eat. They said he was the first person ever to be forced to eat. He must have been an important prisoner.

  Shin was made to write long, remorseful letters to Kim Jong-il, explaining that he was ready to be of service to the revolution. These correspondences had the same tone as the congratulatory letter Madame Choi wrote to Kim Il-sung.

  And then, one day, he was set free. It was February 1983.

  * * *

  COME MORNING, WE are sore and drained from the previous day’s bus trip and the terrors of last night. The Norwegian and his gang are hungover. Others have also been sick to their stomachs. Andrei spent the entire night vomiting after tasting his first-ever matsutake. Earlier this morning, someone saw Ms. Kim tottering onto the beach in her high heels and dress to throw up. Now, all we have to look forward to are hours on the bumpy roads back to the airbase.

  We walk toward the beach and pass the gravel road where members of the Korean Youth Corps, in their white shirts and red kerchiefs, are cycling to school. A long avenue of poplars with white-painted trunks leads to an unusual concrete bunker, reminiscent of a modernist beach house in an Antonioni film. A truck carrying uniformed workers passes us. The workers are standing up straight on the bed, close together; they stare gravely at us.

  We aren’t allowed to travel beyond the concrete bunker — that’s crossing the line. Elias made an attempt to walk to a village farther along but was immediately stopped by a guard. He was given various explanations: there were roadworks; it might be dangerous for him because he doesn’t speak Korean. When these unlikely explanations were left hanging in the air, he was told that these were military orders.

  The morning light is mild and the winds are pleasant down by the sea. We swim and the water is so salty that it lifts us to the surface. As we dry ourselves in the sun, Mr. Song comes walking by. He spends some time skipping rocks with us. When we turn around we see that the cameraman has just captured this scene of unforced fellowship between nations.

  THE BUS SHUDDERS along the potholed roads. It takes six hours to reach Orang, and Mr. Song suggests that we should kill time by singing. Ms. Kim turns out to have the voice of an angel. She glows and sparkles as she and Andrei sing a few traditional Russian folk songs.

  Andrei sits with his computer in his lap. Looking somewhat rumpled, he studies his music downloads. For some reason he has songs by various Swedish Eurovision contestants — Carola, Tommy Körberg — and ABBA’s collected works. He pulls out a bundle of lyrics from his luggage and chooses a song by Baccara, the Spanish disco-queen duo who were in their prime around the same time as Madame Choi was kidnapped. He picks up the microphone with his eyes glued to the paper. In a low voice, he sings the disco queen’s lyrics about love and ecstasy.

  Andrei’s song seems to go on and on forever.

  * * *

  IN THE ANTONOV, we fly northwest to Ryanggang Province, a mountainous region that borders China. We land at Samjiyon Airport, which was built by a South Korean company in the 1980s, when there were ideas about expanding the tourism industry. Samjiyon was supposed to be a ski resort, but the South Koreans pulled out, leaving behind an asphalt square in a coniferous forest.

  The three young men from Bromma in our group appear to be in high school. Their hair is shoulder-length, the collars of their polo shirts are popped, and they’re wearing sports shorts and deck shoes. Why they chose to take a trip to North Korea is a mystery. For a moment, we wonder if the trip is part of hazing at one of Stockholm’s better schools.

  Our bags are loaded onto a trailer attached to a very small, bright red, antique tractor. The boys guffaw as the contraption sputters off toward a simple building that functions as a waiting room. The driver, who has a weather-beaten face and wears a brown uniform and a wide cap, drives his vehicle off unperturbed. Blue-black smoke puffs from the little exhaust, which looks like an organ pipe.

  THE BUS DRIVES us through the forest on gravel roads. Like the other buses, this one is adorned with a red sign that announces that we are “foreigners.” A few of the people walking along the road look at us curiously; many hide their faces. Some rush right out into the trees as we near.

  We’ve started to stake out our seats on the bus already. At the front is Oksana, who talks endlessly to those around her. Those who’ve gone one round with her are happy to switch places. The Russian chemist and his personal guide, Ms. Kim, are also at the front. She is forced to endure his gentle stench. The smell is contained when Andrei sits still, but it’s released when he makes certain sudden movements. A piercing waft slips from his collar, as if he were hiding goat cheese under his shirt. We’ve also found ourselves close to the front, along with the Gothenburger who lives in Minsk and the tattooed baker, but at a safe distance from Oksana’s incessant chatter. The baker is having some stomach trouble. He kills the dead time by reading various issues of World Wildlife magazine from front to back. He’s currently engrossed in an article about lemurs. The Värmlanders seem like they’re fused together; one never leaves the other’s side and both barely say a word. They have found their place in the middle together with the pilot, Trond, and the enormous Swiss, Bruno. Farther back is Ari, with his camera equipment; he has a freshly roused look on his face and wears a flat cap askew. Farthest back are the guys from the posh Stockholm suburb, who we’ve started to call “the Bromma boys.”

  Elias moves around the back of the bus and delivers short, spontaneous lectures. He’s a living encyclopedia on North Korea. He’s read the foreign policy editorials and the stories of defectors; he follows all of the blogs; he knows everything about the ruling dynasty’s family tree and about the diplomats’ hardships in Pyongyang. The Bromma boys listen with amusement.

  Elias talks about the North Koreans’ language. In their dialect, foreign words are avoided. Words borrowed from English are extremely rare, but certain Russian words are part of the vocabulary. All this in accordance with the idea that self-reliance is an essential national trait. South Korean comedy shows sometimes poke fun at the way those in the North speak. Not least, they laugh at the clumsy soccer referees whose words for things like “forward” and “offside” become long, swollen phrases.

  But certain words in North Korea have retained meanings that are lost in the South. Madame Choi writes in her autobiography that during her time in confinement she had a guide who sometimes brought her along to shop for necessities. On one occasion, the guide asked for a bulal in a store. “Bulal” in South Korean means “testicle”; in North Korea it still means “lightbulb.”

  THE CLIMATE IS different at this altitude — much cooler — and the flora reminds us of early autumn in Värmland, with yellow-hued birch trees shading the dense forest.

  We are taken to a clearing, much bigger than the airport and paved with stone. A gigantic, gleaming bronze statue of Kim Il-sung reigns over the landscape. This statue could easily be in a square in a large city, with giant spotlights lining the pavement to illuminate the scene at night. But, instead, it sits in the middle of a fore
st.

  The statue, called the Samjiyon Grand Monument, is supposed to depict the leader during a guerilla attack against Japan. He holds a pair of binoculars in one hand and is backed by four relief groups sculpted in the same social realist style, depicting enthusiastic followers: “On the Field,” “The Motherland,” “Yearning,” and “Forward.” The leader’s body language radiates resourcefulness and decisiveness, but his face has a softness, a touch of the Buddha.

  THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST Roy Richard Grinker says that Kim Il-sung is supposed to resemble a mother figure as much as he does a father figure. In North Korean news articles and stories, he’s often described as feminine in his ways: maternal, caring, and gentle. Far from Stalin’s massive, masculine, frightening scowl, Kim Il-sung’s made-up face is round and has dimples. It is the inviting, relaxed face of a person who is far too good, who spoils his own.

  In The Cleanest Race, the American author B. R. Myers builds on this idea, suggesting that the representations of Kim Il-sung as the country’s mother were later transferred to Kim Jong-il. He was The Son, but he also became the country’s new or parallel Mother through a remarkable transformation: he became a new mother who lives side by side with the elder patriarch/matriarch. In October 2003, the North Korean state declared: “Let the imperialist enemies come at us with their nuclear weapons, for there is no power on earth that can defeat our strength and love and the power of our belief, which thanks to the blood bond between mother and child create a fortress of single-heartedness. Our Great Mother, General Kim Jong-il!”

  IN HIS FINAL years, Kim Il-sung was plagued by a tumour the size of an orange on the side of his neck. Among the malnourished, these tumours — calcium deposits — aren’t uncommon. In North Korea they are called hok. Doctors didn’t dare operate on the leader because the growth was too close to his spinal cord and brain. But all photography of that side of him was forbidden, and on official occasions his bodyguards arranged themselves so as to block its view.

  In a Swedish national radio documentary by Lovisa Lamm, the Swedish diplomat Lars Bergqvist describes how he briefly met Kim Il-sung in the 1980s. He talks about how he couldn’t take his eyes off the enormous tumour, “which was also covered in hair.”

  After the meeting, he said to the North Korean chief of protocol: “It’s very interesting to meet Kim Il-sung, but that was a terrible growth he had. Shouldn’t it be removed?”

  “Which growth?” the functionary replied. “No, he doesn’t have a tumour, it doesn’t exist.”

  Bergqvist understood that the thing was unmentionable and wrapped up the conversation. “All right then, let’s leave it at that.”

  The tumour could have been seen as a mark of nobility, proof of the simple roots that Kim Il-sung transcended. But not at that size. It ruined all that was inviting — those defined eyebrows and the symmetry of his peach-like cheeks.

  As a parental figure, Kim Il-sung is a synthesis of mother and father in the eyes of his citizens. The Korean word “oboi” (parent), which is most often used about the leader, is just a compound of the words “ob” (mother) and “oi” (father). In the large mosaics and cult imagery depicting the leader, his wife is seldom by his side. Mother/Father Kim Il-sung doesn’t need a woman, and all the citizens in the country are his children. In TV interviews at schools and orphanages, the children call Kim Il-sung “Father.” In Korea and Its Futures, Roy Richard Grinker describes a South Korean television spot in which a young North Korean boy is snacking on sweets. A Japanese journalist asks who gave him the candy, and the boy replies: “From the Great Leader, my father.”

  There are many stories, most of them from the KCNA, about how during a catastrophe the first things regular North Korean citizens rescue are portraits of the leader. After the floods that plagued the country in 1997, the KCNA reported: “When the water drained away in the areas that were hit, people were found buried in the clay and sand. Clutched to their chests were portraits carefully wrapped in plastic.”

  WE ARE ENCOURAGED to buy a bouquet of cloth flowers that some uniformed women are selling. They are the only people around. Then we are lined up and asked to bow before the statue, and a representative of the group approaches the pedestal and lays down the flowers. We are slightly embarrassed when we bow, but none of us protest. We’re being incorporated into North Korea’s choreography.

  After a short walk in the afternoon sun by the mirror-like Lake Samji, where we see small squirrels scurrying in the balsam poplars, we notice that the bouquet we bought and placed at the foot of the statue is being offered for sale again. But we don’t see any new customers.

  * * *

  BACK ON THE bus, Mr. Song tries to explain to us what Juche means and how the unique ideology gives the country direction, but it’s all very abstract and we aren’t any the wiser. In English, the word is sometimes translated as “self-reliance.” The Juche ideology is often described as a mix of Stalinism and Confucianism, but above all of isolationism and archaistic, pan-Korean nationalism. Juche can also be seen as part of a Holy Trinity where Kim Il-sung is the Father, Kim Jong-il is the Son, and Juche is the Holy Ghost. Since Kim Il-sung launched the term, this “truth of truths,” as it is written on the Tower of the Juche Idea in Pyongyang, has taken hold in all imaginable areas of North Korean society. Its huge influence is most likely connected to the permanent state of emergency that the country is in — answering a need for security that has deep historical roots and was dramatically realized during the Korean War.

  The American bombardment of North Korea during the Korean War was an inexorable, drawn-out war crime. Almost everything was a legitimate target: all means of communication, roads, bridges, and all productive entities — every factory, rice field, city, and village. The Americans deployed napalm and experimented with biological warfare by using insects that spread anthrax and bubonic plague. North Koreans grew accustomed to living in constant fear of bombing and spent their lives underground, where they built homes, schools, hospitals, and factories. With Hiroshima and Nagasaki fresh in their minds, they were convinced that one of the planes would be carrying a nuclear bomb.

  To endure and then overcome those circumstances was something of a miracle. According to North Korean mythology it was thanks to the resourcefulness of one single man — Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader — that the country emerged victorious from the war. Using his exploits as a leitmotif, the Juche idea of taking control of your circumstances — taking care of yourself and being suspicious of the world around you — took root.

  ONE FACET OF this concept of self-reliance is usually traced back to Korea’s historical practice of isolation. During the latter part of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897), the West referred to Korea as the “Hermit Kingdom,” a term that has since been assimilated in South Korea and used in the country’s own historical accounts. Korea was a nation cloaked in myth. As the story goes, the kingdom didn’t even take in castaways; instead, they were held in the harbours only to be deported as quickly as possible. Others weren’t allowed to leave the country at all. In 1653 Hendrick Hamel, the first Westerner ever to write about Korea, landed there after his vessel, which belonged to the Dutch East India Company, was shipwrecked near Jeju Island. The thirty-six survivors weren’t allowed to leave the country because it was feared that they would reveal the secret of the kingdom’s existence to the rest of the world. After thirteen years, Hamel and seven other crew members managed to escape.

  Whereas Japan allowed some of its harbours to be forced open for trade in the 1850s, following violent threats by the Americans, Korea’s response to the same tactic was to sink the American naval fleet and kill the crew. This incident, as well as the self-containment that dominated the Joseon period, has been highlighted in the retelling of the story of Korea, pushing other, equally valid variations into the shadows. Accounts of Korean history could just as well focus on the generous immigration laws during the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) or when
Korea acted as a safe haven for refugees from Manchuria and China at the end of the Second World War.

  Historically, the primary frame of reference for Korea has been China, which for periods of time it was linked to as a vassal state. The Japanese colonial period from 1910–1945 is actually just a historical parenthesis. Still, one cannot deny that parts of North Korea have been unusually isolated. It’s possible that certain areas have never been seen by Westerners and, with the exception of the odd Japanese colonial functionary, never by another foreigner in modern times.

  AT A MEETING in May 2006 between the South and North Korean militaries, the South’s representative mentioned that it was normal for South Korean farmers to marry foreign women from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mongolia. In the countryside at the time, the population was declining. With more efficient farming methods reducing the number of agricultural workers needed, and new generations of women moving away from rural areas to receive an education, many farmers found it difficult to find a Korean partner. And the educated Korean women were also struggling to find a suitable match — a popular topic of discussion in the South Korean media, along with the extremely low birth rate.

  The North Korean representative interrupted his colleague: “Our nation has always considered its pure lineage to be of great importance. I am concerned that our singularity will disappear.”

  The South Korean answered that the number of foreigners “was a mere drop of ink in the Han River” — the Han being the river that cuts through Seoul.

  The serviceman from the North replied: “Not even one drop of ink must be allowed to fall into the Han River.”

  The North Korean leaders took advantage of the conformist tradition in Korea and used pictures and stories to create the national myth of a “child race” — natural, clean, impulsive, guided by a lovable leader. To a great extent, the myths and attitudes of Japanese fascism were adopted more than those of Confucianism and Communism. The colour white was adopted as a symbol of purity: the white uniforms, the white snow, the white horses.